You know the story. Aging, otherwise faithful Japanese appliance – in this case, a 2001 Honda CRV with enough clicks on the odo to have circumnavigated something significant – develops a quirk. This particular quirk was a transmission “flare,” a delicate little hesitation between shifts, like an old man clearing his throat before delivering bad news. My brother, the owner, was ready to foist it onto the next unsuspecting soul. Sensible.
But I, cursed with a mechanical optimism that borders on pathology, saw a challenge. “Solenoids!” the internet hive mind buzzed. Swapped ’em. Nada. Then, the siren song of the full gearbox replacement. A proper JDM unit? Too many Loonies. But wait! Facebook Marketplace, that digital purveyor of dreams and despair, offered a ’97 CRV slushbox for a mere $100.
“Working unit,” the seller probably typed with one hand while pocketing my cash with the other. The old box came out with that classic ’90s Honda ease. The “new” unit, looking like it was dredged from a swamp, got a power wash baptism. “While we’re in there,” that most dangerous of phrases, led to a new rear main seal. Because why not?
Initial startup post-op was… promising. A brief hiccup with the gear indicator lights (wrong year selector switch, an easy fix) almost fooled me into thinking this gamble might pay off. Then, the test drive. Oh, the test drive.
The flare wasn’t just back; it had invited friends. It was more pronounced, a full-blown slip-and-slide routine. The $100 marvel was, in fact, worse. In a fit of diagnostic desperation, we even swapped the original (faulty) solenoids onto this new (even more faulty) transmission. The result? Predictably, tragically, hilariously awful.
So now, the CRV sits, a monument to ill-advised ambition and the enduring truth that sometimes, the cheapest fix is the one that costs you the most in sanity. Facebook Marketplace: 1. My optimism: 0. The car is, as they say, still for sale. Any takers? Bring a trailer. And maybe a priest.
This article was co-written using AI and was then heavily edited and optimized by our editorial team.
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